Playbook for Dynamics 365 Sales – Old but Gold!?

Quick & Simple: What are Playbooks?

Playbooks for Dynamics 365 Sales are guidelines or predefined activity protocols for similar situations and processes in sales. They are designed to help you optimise sales processes and provide information on the steps that should be carried out as best practice - always based on the activities of the respective lead. This makes it possible to react quickly to critical situations and even to design sales activities with foresight using forecasts (artificial intelligence).

5 advantages of Playbooks

The Playbook tool offers the perfect "care package" for the sales manager who doesn't want to lose sight of his customers. Here are our TOP 5 arguments why you should use Playbook on your Dynamics platform:

Optimised and automated process operations

Increase the productivity of your sales force with standardized and pre-configured processes. The best practice scenarios contained in the playbooks show your employees when they have to carry out which activity. The individual steps are monitored simultaneously while they are being carried out and the employee is notified directly in the event of a deviation.

Fast response times through predefined workflows

Customer details are changing and you need to react? No problem with the playbooks.Your sales department is informed immediately via workflows and an activity is assigned according to the best practice principle stored in the system. This ensures a consistent approach and you can react and act quickly to changing situations.

Further develop and expand your best practices

Include your best practice procedures in the playbooks and use them to share know-how within the company. How should I react to certain incidents? When do I need to get in touch with my customer? Continuous improvement promotes the growth of the company and thus the further development of each individual employee.

Scalability

From small to big - whether a simple process or a complete workflow, Microsoft Playbooks include pre-built templates that can be extended at will. So they can be adapted to your individual needs and those of the client

Creating a playbook in Dynamics 365 Sales

You are now curious and want to create your first playbook? We give you a little guide on how to create your first playbook on the Dynamics platform in just a few steps! Playbooks are available via the Sales Hub Unified Interface. First, make sure this is up to date. From there, navigate to the Management Centre under the App Settings, from where the processes and workflows are controlled. With the help of the templates and categories contained there, you can create your processes and workflows and adapt them to your needs. You can display the activities created from these in your own timeline or get an overview of the created, assigned activities through the playbook template under the heading "Monitoring".

Necessary steps for the creation of a playbook

1. The first step is to create a playbook category.
2. Afterwards, it is necessary to create a playbook template. After saving, the entities can be selected for which the playbook is to be used. Playbooks are configured in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales in the following entities:

• Lead
• Opportunity 
• Quote
• Invoice

3. Now you have the option to create activities for the playbook. The following activities are available for selection: Appointment, Call and Task. 

4. Publish the playbook to include it in an opportunity and launch it  

After publishing the created playbook, you can integrate them into your daily work. The playbook checks the individual steps in the background while you are working on the data records in the live system and is notified of any deviations. What does the whole thing look like in the system? the following slideshow you will get an insight into the simple and user-friendly creation:

To Sum Up

The Microsoft Playbooks offers an ideal opportunity to provide employees with best practice templates to work on activities within the Dynamics 365 Sales platform. The increasing demands of customers and prospects give you an advantage over your competitors through the integration of artificial intelligence. Approach customers with solutions before they realize the problem. Through the best practices, the employees learn procedures and a constant optimization of the process steps arises. In this way, the playbooks offer advantages not only to the company, but also to the employees, which become noticeable in increasing sales figures and stronger customer loyalty.